The Ballestero Blog

Professional Wine Connoisseurs Are In Your Church!

They’re a snobbish lot. Some, if not most, may consider themselves a marked cut above the general population.

After all, their sensory gifts are able to determine the “great” from the “mundane” or even from the “good.”

Some are so good, that just by tasting they can tell you the name of the wine and the year it was bottled.

They also run in very elite circles and hobnob with the movers and shakers in town. Good wines cost a lot of money. So it they aren’t blessed with the green stuff, they hang out with those that are.

From time to time in the upper-crust circles, wine tastings are hosted. Often, it is even a black tie event.

The Sniff

The connoisseurs know their stuff. They all know that judging the color is the first step in tasting wine.

There are five basic steps in tasting wine I am told: These are sometimes known as the “Five S” steps: see, swirl, sniff, sip, savor.

The Sip

Then comes the scoring of the wine.

1. The appearance of the wine,

2. The nose or smell,

3. The palate or taste, and

4. Overall.

After watching the wine tasters swirl the wine in the goblet, sniff the bouquet, sip it and then hold it momentarily in their mouth… they spit it out. That’s right.

The Spit

There are even websites that boast that they can teach you how to spit wine like a pro.

Expectoration may have been the last thing some would have expected. But the connoisseur, the professional wine taster, chooses not to swallow. He is not here to drink. He has come to judge.

I suppose that in the secular world their logic makes sense. The problem is, that the same thing is being done in God’s House.

Who would have thought it? Of all the places wine tasters could have met, most of them seem to meet in our churches.

“What are they doing in our churches?”

“Why, they are wine tasting of course!”

“During the service?”

“Sure!”

“During the preaching?”

“Why, that’s when they do it the most!”

They sit there listening.

They can’t afford to get inebriated like others around them.

They look at the color as they swish it around in their glass.

They sniff at the thought process of the sermon.

They take a sip of it and hold it in their mouth.

They are so gifted; they can identify in their mind the very vineyard it came from and the year it was bottled.

• Umm… that was “Worship 1977.”
• I think that was “Holiness 1962.”
• That was “Doctrine AD 34.”
• “New Birth, Day of Pentecost!”

Oh yes. They know it when they hear it.

Then they spit it out.

They hear the Word, but they refuse to apply it to themselves. They feel they are superior in doctrine, and quite possible in intelligence, to almost every one in the church. Including the pastor.

They’ve heard it all before. They know it all forwards and backwards. But if you think they are going to swallow what they hear in church today, “you got another think a coming.”

They’ve been spitting it out for years! They will keep spitting it out too, until they die. To change and start swallowing would draw too much attention. They would lose their place in the church as a ‘deep’ saint of God. they would also lose face.

Actually they are not deep at all. Anyone can spit. That doesn’t require a gift or ability. They are not connoisseurs of the preached Word of God. They are only critics.

The reason they spit it out is because they are truth rejecters. (While I am on the subject, it seems like God mentioned spewing some folks out of His mouth too.)

The greatest danger you can do to yourself is to hear the Word and not apply it to your own life. Receive it and prosper. Receive it and live. Reject it and die.

They didn’t spit it out when Peter preached to them on the Day of Pentecost!

 Acts 2:37 Now when they heard this, they were pricked in their heart, and said unto Peter and to the rest of the apostles, Men and brethren, what shall we do?

Acts 2:38 Then Peter said unto them, Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost.

Acts 2:41 Then they that gladly received his word were baptized: and the same day there were added unto them about three thousand souls.

The only way to grow in God is to be a doer and not just a hearer.

James 1:23 For if any be a hearer of the word, and not a doer, he is like unto a man beholding his natural face in a glass:

James 1:24 For he beholdeth himself, and goeth his way, and straightway forgetteth what manner of man he was.

James 1:25 But whoso looketh into the perfect law of liberty, and continueth therein, he being not a forgetful hearer, but a doer of the work, this man shall be blessed in his deed.

So…     What are you going to do the next time you hear preaching?

Spit it out, or receive it?